Introducing our New Podcast: Beyond the Bottom Line

We are delighted to introduce Beyond the Bottom Line, a new podcast being produced by the Program on Entrepreneurship at the Yale School of Management. Our goal in launching the podcast is to share stories about the founders, makers and innovators who are creating the next generation of great companies, non-profit organizations and social ventures. We hope to go beyond discussions of the bottom line to find out what motivates them to create the next generation of world changing organizations.

The Program on Entrepreneurship’s mission is to educate founders for business and society. Through this series, we aim to explore the highs and lows that go into launching and operating an early-stage venture. We hope to provide a set of stories that will help current and prospective entrepreneurs learn from the mistakes and successes of other entrepreneurs and early employees. Questions we will ask include: what problems are the founders trying to solve and why? How do decisions made at the earliest stages of a venture impact the trajectory of these ventures? How do founders think about building a team and recruiting top talent? How do founders ensure that their core values are imbued in the culture that they create and that their team members are aligned around these values at every stage of the venture? How do they position their ventures against competitors? How do they create an organizational structure that is flexible enough to adapt at different scales? What advice would they give to other founders who are trying to find their first 100 customers or users? What hurdles did they hit when they were trying to launch?

We will also interview investors and grantmakers to learn more about how they evaluate potential investments in early stage ventures, social ventures, and non-profit organizations. The goal is to help future founders better understand the decision making process that determines go/no go decisions in investment firms and foundations.We will also explore what the future looks like to these investors and what they are most interested in investing in over the next five years.

Our first two episodes include individuals from both sides of the table. In Episode 1, Bridgette Farrer-Muir (SOM ‘16) discusses her role as an early employee at the co-living startup, Common. In Episode 2, Peter Boyce, Founder of Rough Draft Ventures, talks about the early days at Rough Draft Ventures and his vision for creating impact by empowering student entrepreneurs. You can subscribe on iTunes here. We hope you enjoy!